Mayor Vetoes Minimum Wage Increase After Doing “Research”

Though it certainly took her long enough, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh has finally experienced an awakening — one that reportedly spurred her into vetoing a $15 minimum wage bill passed last month by the city council.

Speaking during a news briefing on March 24, shortly after she vetoed the resolution, the Democrat mayor explained that hiking the minimum wage that much would have caused employers to flee the city, resulting in a loss of employment opportunities for those most in need, according to the Washington Examiner.

In clarifying the reasons behind this dramatic about-face — during the election last year, she expressed support for raising the minimum wage and promised to sign such a resolution were she to win — the mayor claimed she “did some research” that opened her eyes to the reality of such wage hikes. She continues to support incremental wage increases promoted by the state government.

Kudos to Mayor Pugh for doing what many of her Democrat peers fail to and performing some basic research. In studying up on the issue, she likely became aware of the enormous harm similar wage hikes in other cities have caused.

Take San Francisco, for instance, where job growth reportedly fell to a five-year low in 2016 after the city raised the minimum wage to $13 per hour, according to The Mercury News. But was that was just the tip of the iceberg. Last year McDonald’s began a nationwide roll-out of self-service kiosks to cut down on labor costs.

Things were already looking bleak for fast-food workers and those like them, and the passage of a $15 minimum wage bill in Baltimore would have only exacerbated the problem, according to the Greater Baltimore Committee, an organization for business leaders.

Not that local liberal zealot and city councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke cared.

“The fight for $15 goes on,” she declared this week after her attempts to override Pugh’s veto failed, as noted by The Baltimore Sun, referencing the nationwide “Fight for $15” movement for a higher wage.

“This is not the end, because it can’t be,” she added from the council’s chamber floor. “This injustice remains and it tears our city apart and it keeps us in shreds. I don’t know where to turn next, but there is always a way.”

While her heart was apparently in the right place, as she sincerely did want to help low-wage workers, her brain was elsewhere. It would take her only 30 minutes of research, if that, to learn that the policies she advocates are the very same ones that would most hurt her constituents.